According to our source, AMD will finally launch its long-awaited 690-series chipset-family tomorrow. Two variants will spearhead the release: the RS690-based mainstream AMD 690G with ATI Radeon X1250 graphics, and the RS690C-based value AMD 690V with ATI Radeon X1200 graphics.

The integrated ATI Radeon X1250 and X1200 graphics cores are identical, in terms of 3D capabilities. Although the ATI Radeon X700-series provides the foundation for the ATI Radeon X1250/X1200 IGP, it is a neutered derivative. The ATI Radeon X1200-family IGP features two pixel-pipelines and two vertex-shaders. Unlike some ATI Radeon X1000-series GPUs, the pixel-pipelines have not been decoupled – the ATI Radeon X1200-family only has two pixel-shaders. AMD specifies a 400 MHz GPU-core clock for reference designs.

Apparently, gaming performance with the ATI Radeon X1200-family IGP is better than NVIDIA and Intel offerings, according to AMD’s internal testing.

With an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ and 2GB of DDR2-667 memory, users should expect a 3DMark05 score above 1000, but under 1200-points. Synthetic benchmarks aside, users should expect 30-35-fps in Half Life 2 and 35-40-fps in Far Cry, according to AMD. AMD’s internal testing was conducted with a screen-resolution of 1024x768, anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering disabled.